


Among The Flowers, It's Better Not To Tell

by The-Clairvoyant-Rick (MajixTrixx)



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Autopsy, Gen, Hanahaki Disease, Implied rickmorty, Romanticized Horror, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-23 18:55:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18707968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajixTrixx/pseuds/The-Clairvoyant-Rick
Summary: More than ever, M-363 doubted the existence of any form of higher life, sure that there was no supreme hand to create the multiverse. No God would be so cruel as to inflict Hanahaki Disease upon their creation. Not even he was so sadistic and without remorse, and Surgeon Rick doubted anything could come as close to being God as he and his genetic kin.





	Among The Flowers, It's Better Not To Tell

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, hi, hello, I am still alive! It's been quite a while since I've posted any sort of Gen fic but I absolutely love the Hanahaki concept and this idea has been floating around in my head — and then in my near endless void of WIPs — for what feels like ages and ages. I'm really stoked to finally put this out there and I hope that, even though y'all are more used to my smutty fics, you'll enjoy this just as much. 
> 
> Xoxo,  
> Clair

****The morgue tucked away in the medical wing of the Citadel was surprisingly small.

For as many Ricks and Mortys as there were at the Citadel during any given time, very few of them actually died there. Most of them met their end elsewhere. In another dimension — ripped to shreds in the belly of some beast, or against the filthy ground on a sleazy backwater planet. Even still, from time to time, that wasn't the case. Every once and awhile, one of the Citadel's two inhabitants kicked the bucket on site and, as a result, they were taken to the only morgue available.

Such was Surgeon Rick's luck.

M-363 tried not to scowl as he ghosted through the empty corridor and deeper into the bowels of his domain. Despite knowing it was still part of his duties (of which there were far too many) Surgeon Rick cursed the daylights out of whatever bum-fuck Rick — or Morty — was stupid enough to land themselves on his slab just hours after he'd completed a truly disgusting amount of paperwork. Though, considering the body in his care was already in the Citadel morgue of all places, M-363 supposed he was already too late to be adding his own malicious intent to the mix.

Even knowing that, Rick's failed-to-be-repressed scowl deepened as he finally reached his destination and flicked a switch beside the door.

The hum of cheap, fluorescent lighting coming to life met his ears like a mosquito call. M-363 tried not to feel vaguely ill as unforgiving light suddenly fell across the white walls and gave them an eerie, luminescent glow. Despite all the fucked up shit he'd dealt with on the Citadel, and in his life before that, M-363 never stopped feeling uncharacteristically uncomfortable in the morgue.

At a surface level, it wasn't the idea of death or the creepy, minimalistic setting that bothered him. It was the immaculate cleanliness. The spotless tile walls, the floors that matched, the refrigerated body coolers along the back wall that were shiny enough to see your face in. All the tools were sanitized and laid out on a rolling table – or they would be very soon – beside the body of his genetic kin, each one in their proper place. It made Rick feel uncomfortable. Everything smelled like disinfectant, like disease was something the patients in this room would ever have to fear. The extent of it seemed so unnecessary, and M-363 hated the vaguely mocking nature of it.

Regardless of his personal thoughts on the matter, Rick still went through the same process he always did. He slid off his gloves and washed his hands thoroughly, adorning them with reinforced nitrile rubber rather than his signature blue latex. An additional medical apron settled over top the first, protecting all the adornments pinned to his more favored frock, and Rick swapped out his blue visor for a longer, wider model that happened to be clear rather than tinted. Laying out his arsenal of saws, pliers, and scalpels was just as easy in the medical wing's basement as it was in his OR prep space and Surgeon Rick didn't think much about it as he readied himself for the task ahead.

He approached the sheet covered corpse with near perfected levels of indifference and casually pulled the cover away, revealing the deathly pale remains of a Rick rather than a Morty. It was, perhaps, rather biased of him, but SR preferred the Ricks to the Mortys. It was somehow easier to see his own slack jawed face and to re-imagine the richly diverse life he — and hopefully his other self — had enjoyed before death rather than thinking about the pitifully short life of a Morty being snuffed out before he'd even reached adulthood.

M-363 frowned and balled up the sheet, tossing it toward the soiled linens container.

His clothes had already been removed, courtesy of whichever Lab Morty initially retrieved and dropped off the body, and M-363 was pleased that he wouldn't have to cut them off himself.

Seeing their clothing always made it too real. Either they wore what any Rick or Morty would wear — yellow shirt, blue sweater, jeans, dark trousers, lab coat, black shoes, white sneakers — or they wore something totally abnormal. It was the latter that bothered him. It made him wonder how they identified, if their choice of clothing was simply the norm where they resided or if they were attempting to stand apart in a crowd composed entirely of other versions of themselves.

As if they could.

M-363 found his inability to completely disconnect from his work distasteful, especially when it came to autopsies. He had no desire to see the unfortunate fucks down in the morgue as anything other than inanimate carbon copies of all the other beings on the Citadel, and he was silently grateful to whichever Morty made it possible for him to remain unattached.

"Good for something after all." SR muttered to himself, pressing a button on the side of the dissection table and watching as a cylindrical glass dome encased the dead Rick and filled with a opalescent mist.

It was for sanitation purposes, as well as to reduce the risk of potential contamination. He had no way of knowing what killed the other man and, after having opened up a body or two in the past only to have the thing be filled with spores or fast spreading parasites (or in one particularly memorable instance, a baby Shiaplurodon) he'd taken it upon himself to err on the side of caution and simply wait for the sanitation process to run its course instead of jumping right in.

It didn't take long, maybe two minutes total, and M-363 was hard-pressed to use the opportunity to grab a quick drink. He didn't. It was one of those days already, and he knew that if he started drinking he wouldn't stop. So the medical Rick simply waited, watching the mist slowly dissipate, soaking into the body and removing the threat of danger.

The scent that filled his nose as the glass retracted made M-363's frown deepen. It wasn't putrid by any stretch of the imagination, not compared to many of the other things he'd smelled in his lifetime, but it tended to rub him wrong. The chemically bitter perfume of disinfectant was stronger than the stuff he used to clean up with, masked by cheap hints of coconut and almond or some shit like that. It reminded him of his first apartment — the furniture and the worn down carpets all reeking of cheap air freshener trying to cover up the smell of sex and weed and cigarette smoke. It hadn't worked then, and it didn't work now.

Pulling a small, somewhat bulky looking tape recorder from his pocket, Rick barely gave it a look as he pressed record, feeling himself slip into a more familiarly cynical mindset. He glanced over at his computer system, making sure the bit of re-worked tech was properly connected and that the small recording light was also blinking, indicating that everything was backed up to Citadel systems. It was nice to know that his files wouldn't be lost (again) if his recorder decided to crap out again.

He really should've tossed the thing. It was junk anyway and he certainly didn't need it, but working with a bulky, old-fashioned recorder would always be a nostalgic preference. One that M-363 doubted he could rid himself of.

"All right it’s fuckin'... Thursday night? I think. Or Wednesday morning. Whatever the machine timestamp for this recording is." Rick readjusted his visor and looked down at the body laid out on the table as he circled around to the other side, glancing at the tag on the big toe as he went. "71 year old Rick, originating from dimension SD-1250, cause of death yet to be determined."

Practiced hands set the recorder alongside his surgical tools without making a sound and M-363 leaned in, making observations as the thing continued to document his voice.

"Very physically fit, more so than the Rick average. Perhaps... 10-12% body fat ratio with a liberal amount of scars at first glance. Adventure heavy lifestyle most likely." He laid one of his hands on the body's side and ran his gloved palm up his wrist and along the length of his radius, probing carefully. "Suspected right forearm augmentation."

M-363 lifted the right arm, examining his bicep and his tricep, making note of a large semi circle scar leading up to his shoulder as well as what he assumed was a poorly set collarbone that'd been broken some years previous. The surgeon was thorough in his investigations. He didn't particularly like doing autopsies, especially ones that lacked excitement, but he still took pride in his work and half-assing it wasn't an option. At least not on days when he was sober.

From the top of his head down to the tips of his toes, Rick looked over every inch of the man laid out in front of him. He made a note of all external scars, poked and pinched and prodded until he was certain he'd found all the inorganic parts and augments he'd need to examine and catalogue, and by the end he still hadn't managed to discover any sort of hint as to what had caused the S-Rick to die. First glance at the body all but promised he wouldn't find COD until he cracked the thing open but he'd still hoped. Even still, by the time M-363 stepped back to take a breath and press pause on the recorder, he was _really_ starting to crave that drink.

"Fucking hell, you're really not gonna make this easy, huh?"

SR glanced up at the clock, staring at its face like his unimpressed attitude would somehow stop it from being 3am. The autopsy itself would take at least an hour, maybe two considering how many potential augments he had to identify and record. Even if he hurried there was no way he'd get finished with all the clean up until after 6:00, a measly two hours before his next shift and _definitely_ not enough time to get piss drunk _and_ sober up. He sighed and, not for the first time, cursed the President and the new standard medical employees were held to under his leadership.

"Just another fuckin' day in paradise." M-363 grumbled, slapping his visor back down over his face and taking a seat on a nearby stool as he hit record and took hold of a scalpel.

Making the Y incision on a corpse felt infinitely easier than opening up the chest cavity on a living person. Even under the effects of anesthesia, his patients were still alive. Their bodies moved beneath his hand with each breath, just as their blood welled up to the surface of his incisions, and while that wasn't an issue, it wasn't so with the dead. There was no breath left in their bodies, no chance of him screwing up the initial incision with a deeper breath than expected, and, by the time they reached his domain, gravity had already started pulling the thick, coagulated blood down into their backs. All that stood between him and the inner workings of his patient was body tissue — skin and muscle and a thin layer of fat — followed by a couple chunks of cartilage.

It reminded him a bit of medical school, but M-363 didn't have much time to live in the past or make comparisons because, as he dragged the sharp instrument down SD-1250's sternum, a whiff of something floral caught his attention.

It wasn't nearly as subtle as the mixture of bitter, artificially scented disinfectant and SR was immediately on guard. His sanitation formula neutralized most of the more common or Citadel known threats but the multiverse was a hell of a big place and M-363 had no way of knowing if this Rick had access to a portal gun or not. One little hitch wasn't enough to make him retreat but the surgeon was still cautious as he set down his scalpel and reached for the other Rick.

All it took was a glance and suddenly a spiderweb of widening cracks shattered his professional mask as he opened up and exposed the chest cavity. M-363 could do nothing but stare in horror.

Flowers. Blue and pink and monsterously red, coagulated remnants of blood clinging to their fragile petals. Twin patches of soft, blue forget-me-nots had their roots dug into both SD-1250's lungs. The cartilage between his ribs was gone, and he could see where the roots were embedded in the spongy tissue and using it up like mulch. Little pink splotches of phlox clustered together to break up the blue and, though he hadn't shifted the organs to be absolutely sure, Rick was pretty positive there were dripping fuchsias hanging from the bottoms of his lungs. If it hadn't been so breathtakingly beautiful, he would've gagged.

Unable to look away, Surgeon Rick shuffled around below his smock and extracted his flask. He no longer cared about the shift he had to work later or the in-office regulations about drinking on the job. All he was thinking about was the poor sonovabitch laid out on his table like an in-home flower bed and the decidedly not altruistic toast to his passing as he took a series of long, significant pulls from his flask.

In the vaguest sense, M-363 knew that Hanahaki Disease existed.

It was in enough dimensions — no matter how few and far between — that the Citadel had blacklisted a couple where it was thought to be contagious rather than genetic but it was his first time actually seeing it in person. It was surreal, staring at healthy, thriving patches of flowers inside of something that used to be alive and well, something _human._ SR's stomach churned. The logical portion of his brain rattled off facts and figures, bits and pieces of information — _unlikely genes in the DNA structure of certain dimensions, the strong imbalance of chemicals in an unrequited pairing supplying the traitorous flowers with nutrients, curable but risky, terminal, coughing, gasping, choking on flower petals, oxygen levels continuously dropping as it became harder and harder to breathe_ — but the surgeon was still barely able to process it.

He'd seen weirder things, and he doubted this would be the last, but something about the sight of it struck him so deeply that M-363 nearly took a seat.

"Patient appears to have been uhh..." He wiped his face with the back of his glove and a shaky breath, faltering in his announcement. *Patient has been _infected_ with Hanahaki Disease. Stage Four."

Rick swallowed and circled part way around the body, years of compartmentalization skills finally taking affect and giving him a sense of detachment. It wasn't much, barely any at all, but it was enough to get by. Despite the very real sense of curiosity the surgeon felt, he desperately wanted to get through with the autopsy. He couldn't hide from his own nature. Thrill of the unknown and things he simply hadn't seen before would always draw him in but the morbid sight and the vague knowledge of where it stemmed from made him want to sew the Rick back up as quickly as he could.

"Fairly safe to assume COD is prolonged asphyxiation." SR droned, stilling near one of SD-1250's shoulders. He didn't really know what to say, certainly didn't how to phrase a professional analysis of it, and at that point his professionalism slipped just a little further and revealed the Rick underneath. "This guy's lungs are fucked with flowers. I don't even know how else to put it. They're everywhere, embedded all over and probably inside of his lungs. He looks like a fuckin' — a flower arrangement at Lowes. I don't know how he didn't kick the bucket before now."

And he really didn't.

M-363 was certainly no expert, in Hanahaki or botanical science outside of his field, but he knew this Rick must have suffered. It had to have gone on for quite some time. Knowing himself as well as he did, SR was sure Rick had tried to stop the growth himself. He suspected that's why the flowers were outside of the lungs rather then only on the inside, but he couldn't be sure. It was rare that any dimensions had the condition and from what little he'd read, the disease could present in various and often unexpected ways.

What M-363 _didn't_ understand was why SD-1250 hadn't simply gotten it treated the old fashioned way.

Even someone as inexperienced with it as he was knew that there was a cure for the affliction. He'd heard, as well as read, that the flowers just had to be surgically removed in order for them to go away and SR was fairly confident he himself could have done it had the damage not been so extensive.

A frown tugged at the corners of Surgeon Rick's mouth. He didn't like not knowing, and rather than muddle his way through the dark he suddenly turned away from the corpse and went to his laptop. Rick dropped heavily onto his stool and quickly signed in, dragging up the Citadel Wide Web and typing in his inquiry.

The man grumbled as blue eyes searched for information, skimming over unhelpful articles and pieces of click bait before eventually finding one that, while somewhat more flowery — he physically scowled at the pun — was much more direct and closer to what he was looking for.

 

_Hanahaki Disease (otherwise known as Love Sickness) is a medical condition that, when left untreated, results in live flowers growing inside the lungs of the person infected until death. It presents in both men and women and, though scientists have long since tried to disprove the cause of its origin, the only known cause of Hanahaki Disease is extreme cases of unrequited love._  

_While rare, (even in the dimensions where it actually exists) Hanahaki doesn't simply occur in cases of unrequited puppy love or crushes. Interviews with patients — both pre and post-op — have made it clear to researchers that the flower disease only comes about when unconditional love and soul bound dedication toward a romantic partner go unnoticed or are unreturned over a long period of time. Despite being incredibly unlikely, scientists have found no other cause for the disease and have yet to develop a vaccination to prevent it._  

_Even with no vaccinations or medicinal cures, it's possible to have the flowers surgically removed with high success. The treatment itself is yet another portion of the disease that remains a mystery, despite being heavily explored. Patients have reported that, once the flowers were removed, they no longer felt any romantic inclination toward the person they originated from. In many cases, patients reported an inability to feel or properly express romantic love toward future partners after having the surgery. Researchers remain uncertain of the science behind the change but it's proven to be fairly consistent, resulting in a 70% chance of romantic muteness. In extremely rare cases, even after the flowers were removed they simply grew back and were unable to be removed a second time._

_Very little is known about Hanahaki Disease and scientists have unanimously agreed that it's a baffling phenomenon privy to only a few unlucky dimensions. The flowers found in the lungs are rarely the same species from patient to patient, and their growth rates vary. The only consistent thing about the disease are the symptoms, which tend to include shortness of breath, coughing, tightness in the chest, headaches, and (most notably) the appearance of flower petals after intense coughing sessions. Most symptoms appear in the first stages of the disease, giving the subject ample time to get them removed, but not doing so results in death._

_In light of all that's been discovered about this ailment thus far, perhaps the most intriguing thing about this enigmatic condition is that, should the person experiencing unrequited love suddenly have their feelings returned, the flowers will go away on their own with very little recovery time..._

 

The article continued on but Rick had read enough. He was familiar with the more technical medical aspects that the author went on to cover, and he didn't need a refresher on the neurochemical science of it. The surgeon glanced back at the Rick laid out on his examination table and felt an unwanted pang of sympathy echo through him. Poor bastard.

Rick frowned and stood from his stool, computer abandoned as he took a few steps and loomed over the corpse of his other self.

He'd seen so many things during his medical career. He'd been witness to hollow bodies eaten from the inside, corpses full of bugs and mushrooms and various types of parasitic spores. He'd seen them mangled, torn apart, missing limbs and bent up all unnaturally, experiments gone wrong in just about every way imaginable, but none of them had left him feeling so uneasy. Maybe it was the unexpected nature of it, or the fact that he'd been working doubles back to back for nearly a month, but staring down at the nest of flowers inside the corpse of another version of himself — one that'd loved so deeply that it killed him in the end — made Surgeon Rick wish he could just drop everything and go home to get brutally wasted.

"Why didn't you just get them taken out you dumb sonovabitch.." He whispered.

He didn't understand it. _Couldn't._

He couldn't count the number of Ricks that would've _killed_ for that opportunity. The knowledge that they might just inflict romantic muteness upon themselves, never again forced to worry about sentiment getting in the way of their work. He'd never met a Rick that _wanted_ to fall in love, at least not any sane, self-respecting one, and he'd certainly never met a Rick that would willingly put themselves through a slow, agonizing death rather than just... M-363 released a shaky exhale and then suddenly found himself seething with misplaced rage.

"What the hell was so important that it was worth your life?" He angrily demanded, slamming both hands down against the cold metal slab. "Who the fuck was so special that you'd rather die than not love them? Huh? Who the hell could matter so much to you, you stupid fuck!"

The surgeon lashed out and slapped the corpse across its waxy face, snapping its head to the side and watching as lifeless eyes sat half mast and pale lips fell open. He could almost imagine that the other was trying to answer him, that he wanted to, but there was nothing but silence and that bothered him more than it should have. It was a corpse, not a person. It wasn't going to answer him.

Despite making it his mission to never think about his patients beyond what was absolutely necessary, Rick couldn't seem to divorce himself enough to abide by that. All he could think about was the Rick laid out in front of him — his life, his family, the inventions in his workspace. He wondered what sort of Rick SD-1250 had to be, whether he was more of an asshole than the rest of them or less. He wondered if he had a Beth, or if he'd lived on the Citadel with no real family to speak of.

But mostly he wondered who SD-1250 had loved so deeply.

He briefly entertained the idea that it'd been Diane. He doubted it but he couldn't say it wasn't her. Lots of Ricks had lost their way because of the beautiful blonde woman that eventually gave birth to the daughter they came to love more than anything. He wondered if he'd met an alien during his travels, maybe one that couldn't return human emotion or form attachment that way. Maybe he was one of those Ricks that fell for their best friend, Birdperson more likely than Squanchy, but M-363 tried not to judge. Were they human? A person from Earth? Another Rick? Unity?

He considered them all but, deep down, the surgeon knew it wasn't any of them. It had to be a Morty.

Who else could crawl so completely under the skin of a Rick but their half-wit grandson? Who else was so important, so fundamentally essential, that a another version of himself would rather die than lose? Mortys were a weakness, they always had been. Even to him. He'd thought, just earlier, that he'd rather see a dead Rick than a dead Morty and he knew that many of his other selves felt the exact same way. They were so generic, so utterly basic and normal and painstakingly predictable most of the time, but they still had the ability to thaw out and sway one of the coldest hearts in the multiverse and, for that, Mortys were more powerful than they'd ever know.

Rick reached out and pinched one of the tiny blue petals between his fingers, toying with it. The petal was soft. Silky, almost, and SR was mesmerized as he smeared the leftover blood and turned it purple

He wondered why SD-1250 had suffered. Mortys were affection hungry, starved for attention and recognition, desperate for praise, and the medical Rick had no doubt that if the now dead Rick had attempted something between them, it would have succeeded. Morty would have loved him back in an instant and SD-1250 wouldn't have to be dead. He wouldn't have flowers in his lungs or a Y incision from his shoulders down to his groin. He'd be back wherever the hell he belonged, going on adventures or inventing or watching bullshit TV with his grandson.

But he hadn't, and he wasn't, and that was just another thing left to confuse him.

Was his other self — his _dead_ self — so unselfish that he'd really rather die than hurt his grandson? Had he stayed away for fear of ruining the boy? Tarnishing yet another thing in his life as all Ricks were prone to doing? Had he stayed away for Morty's sake? Content to suffer and try to cure himself in whatever time he had left than take yet another thing away from Morty's life?

Or had he simply been a coward.

Ricks were shut off, emotionally constipated beings. The sheer amount of mental and emotional walls built up around them could've held off the Federation for decades and Rick couldn't help but wonder if that's what led to this Rick's downfall. He wondered if maybe he'd just been too scared, unable to open himself up like that and risk any sort of rejection. Unable to let himself be vulnerable, even for the person he loved most, and willing to take that weakness to his grave rather than live with it.

It was easier to imagine him that way, less painful, but M-363 had a feeling that, if that'd been the case, Rick would've just gotten the flowers removed and been done with it.

But he hadn't.

He'd left them alone, let them dig their roots in and choke him until there was no air left to breathe.

The medical Rick was somber as he re-positioned SD-1250's head to its former position. He went to press his jaw closed as well only to have his brow furrow in confusion when he was met with resistance. SR pinched the corpse's chin with a frown and pulled it further open as he leaned over to peer into down his throat, tiny flashlight already in hand. There was something dark and bulbous blocking the airway, competently filling the entrance of his throat, and M-363 was surprised that he hadn't noticed it in his initial examination when he was feeling along the underside of the jaw.

Curious and, for a split second, wondering if he may have misjudged the cause of death, SR murmured, "Subject appears to have something lodged in the back of their throat." before holding the flashlight between his teeth and reaching for a pair of mosquito forceps. The curved tips gleaned under the unforgiving fluorescent lighting as he lowered it into the Rick's mouth and tried to take hold of the bottom of the obstruction. Whatever it was was stuck and M-363's brow dipped that much further as he started to tug, trying to force the thing out.

The tugging and pulling drew it a little further from SD-1250's throat and, as he continued to fight with it, saliva soaked petals loosened and Surgeon Rick was suddenly horrified to realize that it was a flower bud of some kind.

Queasy unease sat heavily in the M-Rick’s stomach but he'd never admit that his hand trembled as he released the forceps and took the small flashlight from between his teeth.

"The.. The object has been identified as some sort of flower bud and I'm —" The surgeon paused, staring down at Rick's open mouth as he swallowed, unable to wet his throat. "I'm now going to try and extract the obstruction from the esophagus." He croaked.

There was a certain sense of detached surrealism to his actions as he shut off his tape recorder and set it aside with an air of finality, tucking his flashlight into his frock and reaching for a scalpel instead. SR barely felt like he was in control of his actions. All it took was a small incision and a sickening snap from inside SD-1250's trachea as he cut through what he assumed was the flower stem and then he was right back at the corpse's mouth, grasping his forceps and trying to pull it free once more.

Even having cut the stem, the flower refused to relinquish its hold right away and M-363 grunted as he pulled with greater force. Even then, it still held on, and Rick eventually gave it a harsh jerk and ripped it free with a sickening sound.

The moment he pulled it out of Rick's mouth, SR realized why it'd given him so much trouble.

It was a rose. A dark, spit soaked one, and the stem was long and thick with a truly terrifying amount of thorns sprouting from its sides. This time M-363 really did gag as he looked the accursed thing over. The thorns were clinging to bits and pieces of its host, stringy chunks of flesh hanging from their partially curved tips, and the surgeon's stomach rolled. He had no doubt the inside of SD-1250's throat was shredded.

More than ever, M-363 doubted the existence of any form of higher life, sure in his belief that there was no supreme hand to create the multiverse. No God would be so cruel as to inflict Hanahaki Disease upon their creation. Not even he was so sadistic and without remorse, and Surgeon Rick doubted anything could come as close to being God as he and his genetic kin.

As if in a trance, SR walked over to the sink and opened the tap, letting cool water run heavily over the rose and its stem. The water barely seemed to bother it, the stem not so much as bending under the cascade, and Rick watched with a detached gaze as it once again became clean. The water ran clear, the bits and pieces of soft, pink tissue swirling down the drain, and small droplets of water clung to the loosening petals. It looked so faultless. Like it was just a rose. Like it hadn't been buried in someone's throat. Like it hadn't killed them.

Rick dropped the flower in the bottom of the sink.

He didn't want to see anymore.

Shutting the water off, M-363 turned his back on the rose and re-approached SD-1250. His eyes were glazed as he pulled his chest cavity closed and grabbed a needle and thread. Normally he removed all the organs, weighed them, cataloged the augments and what they were, potentially kept anything interesting enough to catch his eye, but he couldn't. SR desperately wanted the other Rick back in the cooler where he belonged, ready to be taken from the morgue by whatever fuckhead Morty was in charge of the day shift so that he'd never have to see him again. The paperwork for those measurements alone should've taken him hours but there were a thousand other Rick's dead and gone, just like him, and it wouldn't be anything to slap down some numbers and call it good. Writing up his report would be a little harder, more time consuming at least, and possibly harder to stomach, but SR was determined to let it sit as long as he was able.

Rick was mindless as he worked — pinching, pressing, pulling thread — doing everything in his power not to think about what lay underneath his hands. It did very little to quell his traitorous mind, and the surgeon wondered what sort of flowers he would've found had he opened up his lungs. Would they have been forget-me-nots, tiny and blue and just as invasive on the inside as the outside? Or would they have been something different. More roses? An entire thorny bush trapped inside flesh. Could they have been daisies? Or maybe carnations. Peonies? Dahlias? Orchids? Hellebore or Begonias? Lilies? It could have been any of them, maybe none, and Rick knew the question would probably haunt him for the rest of his life but he didn't pause in his sewing. He would never know and that was fine as long as he got SD-1250 the fuck off his table and as far away from the medical wing as he could.

It took longer than he could ever remember, sewing up the Y incision on the torso, but he made sure to give it all the attention he would've afforded any other corpse. He kept the stitches firm, making sure they were mostly uniform with all the others, and the moment he tied the knot and snipped the thread, Rick pulled his flask free and drained the last of it. There wasn't nearly enough in it to keep him from thinking but something was better than nothing and SR took full advantage of it, holding his tongue out for the last drop and then shoving the thing back under his frock with a scowl.

Rick didn't give a fuck how many clinic hours he had to work to make up for it, he wasn't taking the next shift. Whatever Physician Rick thought he had the day off was about to be shit out of luck and Rick didn't envy the scheduling Morty all the phone calls he'd be forced to make in his absence, but Rick honestly didn't give a damn. The moment SD-1250 was in the cooler, he was going home. Or to a bar. Or twelve. Anywhere there was enough alcohol to drown out what he'd just seen.

M-363 loaded the corpse into the cooler with very little hassle and slapped the door closed, locking it and scrawling a quick note. Without thinking, he ripped off his gloves and approached the sink, ready to wash his hands of the whole situation, only to stop dead when he saw the rose in the bottom of the basin. The petals had started to unfurl, the bud now halfway to bloom as it laid in the leftover pools of water, and Rick couldn't deny that it was one of the most beautiful flowers he'd ever seen.

It was so classic, so elegantly simple, and SR found a fucked up sort of justice in that. Love was just as classic. Just as elegant. And far more dangerous.

The thorns adorning love's rose didn't just rip through flesh. It tore through memory, ripped through emotion and left behind ugly, puckered scars that ached more fiercely than any physical wound. People, places, sights, sounds, _smells…_ They all became landmines, each little trigger hidden deep down below the surface like roots in the soil, binding the scar tissue even more deeply into psyche.

M-363 despised what the thing stood for.

He loathed the knowledge that the only reason the rose existed in the first place was because of SD-1250's love. He hated that, even unreturned, he'd been forced to pay the ultimate price, winding up with something so much worse than gnarled scars from love gone sour, simply because his heart couldn't let go.

And yet... Rick hadn't been able to let go either.

The surgeon frowned and reached down with a careful hand to pluck the rose from the bottom of the sink.

He'd circled back to it more than once but SR still couldn't wrap his head around SD-1250's decision not to remove the flowers. Not to abandon his love, even as it choked the life out of him. Rick's frown deepened, and he rolled the thick stem back and forth between his fingers, staring at the still-damp petals. What Morty — what _anything_ — could possibly be worth the value of a Rick's life? He imagined the Mortys around him, their smiles and their boyish nature, the stuttered out praise and righteous sense of morality, yellow shirts, brown curls, shy personalities, and he tried to imagine being so enamored with it all that he'd rather die than let his emotions go unfelt.

SR wasn't surprised that he couldn't.

He couldn't imagine a single other Rick that'd understand it, let alone one willing to make that sacrifice.

What a fool.

And the worst part — or one of the worst all things considered — was that Morty would never know. He'd never know how much he meant to SD-1250. He'd never know how painstakingly selfless his Rick had been, that he'd died to protect his innocence, or even that his love was so pure and so valuable to him that he'd rather choke than not feel it anymore. Morty would have no idea, and possibly even worse than that was the knowledge that he probably hadn't been able to say goodbye in anyway. SR highly doubted that the S-Rick would have given any hint as to what was happening or what he planned to do. He'd probably left with little more than a wave, as most of his other selves were prone to doing, Morty none the wiser. His Rick would simply not return, leaving Morty to wonder if Rick had abandoned him or gotten killed elsewhere.

It was a travesty to be sure.

Who the fuck knows, maybe Morty was dead too, or well on his way to dying. Maybe, through some rotten twist of fate, he'd contracted the flower disease too. Maybe he was coughing up flower petals at that very moment, panicked and desperate for Rick to come back and help him, only to wind up dead in his home dimension or some back Citadel alley with an entire flower shop crammed into his scrawny, teenage body.

Rick's already dampened spirit took another hit and, more than ever, he wanted to go get wasted. Fuck the paperwork, fuck proper protocol and his job and the Citadel, fuck SD-1250 and his Morty. Fuck the flower disease.  

He sneered in disgust, at what he wasn't entirely sure, and, with a burst of morbid inspiration, he turned on heel and stalked back across the room, bypassing the examination table entirely. Crisp, medicinal white was broken up by an out of place splash of color and M-363 came to a stop in front of a shelf adorned with chemicals. An entire arrangement of preservatives and anticoagulants were shelved neatly on the wall, some he'd purchased and others he'd made himself, and Rick stared intently at the labels as he put together a mental cocktail to suit his needs. It wouldn't take much, at least not compared to a body, and despite having the entire rainbow to choose from, Rick eventually decided on a clear, basic preservative and a small splash of liquid sublimation agent.

Muscle memory took over and M-363 mixed the concoction together without really knowing why. There was no reason for it, no true purpose, but he continued on, watching thick, clear liquid thin and take on a vaguely amber tint as the two substances merged and bonded within the glass beaker. Rick stared at it for a long moment, mind blessedly empty, and with very little hesitation he held the rose out in front of him and started to drizzle preservative on it. Even after thinning a bit, the mixture reminded him of honey and SR tried to hold that innocent thought at the forefront of his mind as he rotated the horridly lovely thing between his fingers. He saturated the rose, watching watered down amber drip from the petals and the thorns, tapping low and incessant against the metal counter top, and the warm, pulsing walls of Rick's heart hardened as it clung to the flower and immortalized it in seconds.

He should've killed it — if such a monstrous thing could possibly be killed — but he didn't. He watched as the preservation sunk into the stem, watched it turn the petals a shade darker, watched as the thing became all but indestructible, and felt a weight settle in his chest. Soon, it would be all that remained of SD-1250's love, all that survived beyond the unforgiving disease that'd wracked his body more surely than the emotions ravaging his heart. SR felt both comforted and horrified by the idea that that he'd been the one to keep it from wilting and dying alongside Rick, buried in his throat and silent against the back of his tongue. It was as much of a courtesy was it was sacrilegious assumption, but the surgeon was beyond caring.

Hardened and encased in a thin, flexible resin, the rose felt simultaneously dead and very alive in between his fingers, and M-363 spared it a single glance before returning to the cooler and opening it. There was a little less than five inches of space below SD-1250's toes, and Rick laid the rose at his feet. It looked vibrant against cold metal, like a representation of life rather than death, and his heavy heart  throbbed inside his chest.

Paper appeared almost out of nowhere, and even with tacky fingers and a tremor in his hand, M-363 managed to pen a note in his hurried scrawl and he swallowed heavily, slipping it just beneath the stem.

 

**To the Morty of the deceased —** _"He was a man, take him for all in all. I shall not look upon his like again."_

 

Morty was no Hamlet, and Rick certainly no just king, but rarely did he encounter such decency and devotion, rarely did he encounter such altruistic sacrifice, and M-363 felt that it was fitting. Hamlet had worshipped his father — for whom the quote was spoken of shortly after the man's death. He'd loved him dearly, even viewed him as more than a mere man in life, and SR could see that in Morty. Not just SD-1250's Morty, but all of them, in their own way. Even through the various resentments they carried, Mortys were alight with wonder and the sort of awe that fueled the fire of their ego and the creativity that made them more than they ever were before, but he was still a man. They all were. Men that lived, and men that died, and Rick felt that the only thing more fitting would have been if he'd quoted The Tempest and reminded Morty that he who dies pays all debts.

And it'd been a debt. His love had cost him his very life and only SD-1250's death had absolved him of that cost.

There was a finality to it as he closed the cooler door, sealing his counterpart away with a single red rose at his feet. For a split second he couldn't breathe as he thought of him in there. Panic slithered up his esophagus. It choked him with imagined stems and petals and unfathomable discomfort as he thought of a thick, clumpy wad forcing itself further up his throat, gagging him in an attempt to get free. It wasn't real but he could still feel thickly clumped emotion against his tongue — wet and clinging like soaked silk — and if he could've, Rick would've spat the lump into his palm simply to be rid of it.

The phantom taste of blood sat heavily in his mouth, a reminder of what he'd seen and what he'd hopefully never see again, and Rick swallowed with a wince, imagining thorns embedded in his throat like the ultimate death sentence.

But he didn't love. He loved nothing and no one, and that thought alone was enough to rip the traitorous roots from the pleura that lined his lungs. They were nothing but a figment of his imagination, and M-363 let that knowledge draw air deep into his lungs, filling them to the point where he felt like they'd burst.

It was the single greatest luxury he'd ever encountered, being able to breathe, and as M-363 swept from the morgue, leaving everything behind without a care, he allowed himself to believe that he'd never take it for granted again.

The scent of fresh flowers followed him all the way to the end of the hall.


End file.
